Friday Reflections is all about reflecting on the week by observing our senses. My hope is that this will be a gentle, easy way to tune into how we are doing and what we are experiencing weekly when journaling in general can feel so daunting.

Now, for this week’s Friday Reflections (with each sense as your inspiration, consider how experiencing it impacted your week).

Here is my sensory round-up for this week:

tasting :: pizza from the local joint, wonton, mushroom, chicken and rice soup, skillet-fried chicken with macaroni and cheese and butter beans from King’s Kitchen, caramel cake and molten chocolate cake (shared desserts from King’s Kitchen), hot chocolate, roasted asparagus, a delicious mixed greens salad with homemade ranch, a scrambled egg with just the right amount of cheddar cheese, and the MOST AMAZING breakfast crepe from The Homegrown Crepe (incidentally, one of my birthday list items was eat from a food truck and we just happened upon one Saturday morning and I ran to it! So glad I did. Delicious!).

hearing :: 19 gorgeous, aching songs from the Indigo Girls as they performed with The Charlotte Symphony, this was both an incredible high and a bittersweet experience. We took the Circle de Luz Class of 2014 to the concert as three of them are musicians and they LOVED the music. It was a wonderful show– so electric– but the Indigo Girls song catalog takes me back to the days where I sometimes felt lonely or invisible or was nursing heartache so there was a part of me that felt so tenderhearted. This song, my all time favorite of the IG catalog in all its gorgeous impossible love, had me teary eyed. And truth-telling: there has been some listening to that song on repeat this week because sometimes your soul just needs a little defibrillation.

smelling :: cut grass, candles, steamed broccoli, knock-out roses

seeing :: pumpkins, pumpkins everywhere as we hauled the wagon to the pumpkin fundraiser and loaded up on gourds of every variety. We know have a fabulous pumpkin tower on our front porch, gourds displayed in the fireplace, and a pie pumpkin on Happy’s dresser (you know, as it should be).

feeling :: really, really inspired by the medical students I worked with this week on reflecting deliberately about becoming doctors and writing mission statements. I am in the midst of a really inspiring partnership with a medical school around helping medical students examine and grow from what they are experiencing internally as they see and treat patients and these young doctors give me so much hope for the future. One of the things we did was write mission statements together and I was just blown away. I would have signed up to have anyone of them for a doctor with the way they were so deliberate (and excited about) claiming who they will be in their practice. I look forward to watching them this year and seeing where they go.

wishing/hoping :: to make a positive impact this weekend as I travel to Washington DC to speak at the National Eating Disorder Association‘s annual conference. My topic? Eating Disorders Don’t Discriminate: Impacts of Acculturation, Barriers to Care, and Unique Contributing and Protective Factors. Really excited about this opportunity to be with so many amazing people doing this healing work.

What about you? What were your sensational experiences this week? Please share!